CHAPTER XIX[ToC]
SOCIALIST VIEWS ON BRITISH RAILWAYS AND SHIPPING
Many Socialists complain, and they complain with good cause, about the railways of Great Britain. All the British railways are in private hands, and they are very inefficient. They are in many respects very backward, badly equipped, and badly managed. They have wasted their capital, watered their stock, and have paid dividends out of capital; their freight charges are exorbitant; besides, they give habitually and by various means, with which it would lead too far to deal in this book, preferential treatment of a very substantial kind to the foreigner.
Many Socialists have extracted from British Government publications instances of such preferential treatment. One of the most widely read Socialist writers, for example, gives among others the following freight charges favouring the foreigner:
"Carriage of a ton of British meat, Liverpool to London, 2l.: Carriage of a ton of foreign meat, Liverpool to London, 1l. 5s.: Carriage of a ton of eggs Galway to London, 4l. 14s.: Carriage of a ton of eggs Denmark to London, 1l. 4s.: Carriage of a ton of plums, apples, and pears, Queenborough (Kent) to London, 1l. 5s.: Carriage of same from Flushing (Holland), 12s. 6d.: Carriage per ton of English pianos Liverpool to London 3l. 10s.: Carriage as above of foreign, 1l. 5s.: British timber per ton Cardiff to Birmingham, 16s. 8d.: foreign as above 8s. 10d. In the carriage of iron ore and steel rails the American railways charge 6s. 3d. where the British charge 29s. 3d."[729]
"The real enemy are the monopolists of land and locomotion—the landlord and the raillord who are uprooting the British people from their native soil. It is in fact by no means easy to say which is the greater malefactor of the two."[730] Such differential charges are bound to cripple the British industries, and in view of the harm which is thus being done to British farmers, manufacturers, and traders, it is only natural that British Socialists are unanimous in condemning the anti-British freight policy of the railways and in recommending that they should be taken over and managed by the State.
"There are nearly 24,000 miles of railway in the kingdom, the greater part of which is owned or controlled by a dozen great companies, who, moreover, have standing conferences through which they exercise a virtual monopoly against the public, although they have all the expenses of competing concerns. The public bears the costs and inconveniences of competition without many of its benefits. The total capital of the companies is 1,300,000,000l. of which 200,000,000l. is nominal or 'watered' stock. A very large part of the rest was for extravagant sums paid to great landowners for their land and another large part for legal expenses. On this huge capital a sum of 44,000,000l. has to be earned in dividends. If the State bought out the railways, it could borrow this necessary sum for at least 5,000,000l. to 8,000,000l. a year less than this, and at once effect enormous savings resulting from the present competitive and chaotic methods of the companies. Despite the virtual monopoly, there are over 3,000 railway directors drawing fees or salaries amounting to nearly 1,500,000l. Of the principal of these there are eighty in the Lords and twenty-five in the Commons. Mr. Gladstone predicted that if the State did not control the railway companies, they would control the State, and this has come to pass. Their servants are overworked and underpaid, extortionate freights are charged on the carriage of goods, unfair preferences are given, but Parliament is powerless to check this."[731]
"The railway system to-day is the greatest protection ever heard of in favour of the foreigner, and neither Mr. Chamberlain nor Mr. Balfour, nor any other man makes a single proposal to touch the railway question. Why? Because the House of Commons is dominated by the railway interest."[732] "Our railway experience proves that it is not enough to make preferential rates illegal. They reappear too easily in the form of rebates and even of allowances which belong to the more private chapters of capitalist history. The attempt of the Railway Commission to abolish preference in railway rates has left us with a system which could not be much worse from the national industrial point of view."[733]